Greendale Mall seeking reboot

Monday

Mar 4, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Lisa Eckelbecker TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The Greendale Mall is looking for a few good stores, and it’s looking close to home.

The mall, operated and partly owned by real estate investment trust Simon Property Group Inc., is inviting local retailers and smaller businesses to consider relocating or expanding at the mall, the kind of property that has been known historically as the domain of national retailers.

Mall manager Ken Brown would not say exactly how much space is vacant in the two-level mall, but he knows what the mall could use — another restaurant to fill a shuttered space in the food court and maybe a convenience store where shoppers could purchase a soda or lottery ticket. Other uses — some malls now rent space to colleges — could be acceptable too, he said.

“The right retailer here is someone who can thrive and do well,” Mr. Brown said.

The Greendale Mall is seeking tenants at a time when malls outside the most affluent markets are navigating difficult currents. Consumers remain cautious with their spending, and increasing amounts of money are flowing to online retailers. Meantime, some of the nation’s mall mainstays — including Sears Holdings, Gap Inc. and Talbots Inc. — have closed hundreds of stores.

That space is filling at painfully slow rates, and effective rents are stuck at 2005 levels, according to senior economist Ryan Severino of real estate research firm Reis Inc.

“Until the economy begins to create more and better jobs, retail sales will remain listless, demand will remain at low levels and the vacancy compression will be slow and tedious,” Mr. Severino wrote in a January note to Reis clients.

The Greendale Mall opened in 1987 off Interstate 190 and offers 430,000 square feet of gross leasable space, including a nearby 120,000-square-foot office building.

In between the well-known retailers are locally operated stores. A large space previously occupied by Gap’s Old Navy chain now holds a Royal Décor furniture store. Another 3,000-square-foot space reopened Valentine’s Day as Chic D’Afrique, selling jewelry, handbags, scarves and other accessories.

Chic D’Afrique owner Roseline Awadjie of Framingham relocated her Green Street store to the mall because she thought she could offer shoppers something different. It is too early to tell how her store will work in a mall, she said.

“It depends on the feedback, but I will extend it to other malls if it works out,” she said.

Simon typically asks national retailers to sign multiyear leases, but local tenants usually start with a one-year agreement that allows either side to end the lease with a month’s notice. Mr. Brown said Simon will visit a local retailer’s other stores or maybe examine the applicant’s business plan, all while trying to find what will work in a market.

“Obviously, we’d prefer to have the whole mall filled with top-tier national tenants,” he said. “But in a lot of cases, we have local tenants that do as well as national tenants.”